German Jewish History and Culture
Fall 2008
This course provides a wide-ranging exploration of the culture and history of German Jewry from 1750 to 1939. It focuses especially on the Jewish response to modernity in Central Europe, a response that proved highly productive, giving rise to a range of lasting transformations in Jewish life in Europe and later North America, in particular, and in European culture and society, more generally.
Until the mid-eighteenth century, Jewish self-definition was relatively stable. From that point on, it became increasingly contingent and open-ended. Before the rise of Nazism in 1933, German Jewish life was characterized by a plethora of emerging possibilities. This course explores this vibrant and dynamic process of change and self-definition. It traces the emergence of new forms of Jewish experience, and it shows their unfolding in a series of lively and poignant dramas of tradition and transformation, division and integration, dreams and nightmares. The course seeks to grasp this world through the lenses of culture and history, and to explore the different ways in which these disciplines illuminate the past. We will discuss processes of change that began with Jewish emancipation, the entry of Jews into European culture and society, and the acculturation (vs. assimilation) that ensued. These processes released new energies and produced new challenges for Jewish life. These energies led to the invention of the “Wissenschaft des Judentums” (the “science” or “academic study” of Judaism) and to various attempts to re-form traditional Jewish life for a modern world – resulting in the reform, conservative and modern Orthodox movements. These newly released energies also gave rise to the literary salons of Berlin and Vienna, conducted by various independent Jewish women (e.g. Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Henrietta Herz) and serving as centers of German cultural activity. Similarly, individual Jews made important contributions far in excess of their numbers to modern European culture and society – in literature and the press, politics, philosophy, the natural and the social sciences. We will consider contributions by such figures as Marx, Freud, Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Kafka, Heine, Wittgenstein, Rosa Luxembourg, among others, and explore what, if any, relationship their works had to do with their Jewish background. Finally, we will consider the various Jewish responses to modern politics of the left and right in Germany, including socialism, liberalism, the völkisch movements, political anti-Semitism and Zionism.
This course is intended to acquaint students with the study of German Jewish culture and history and assumes no prior training in the subject. Class meetings will combine lecture and discussion. A large share of the reading assignments will come from primary sources – novels, short stories, poems, folktales, diaries, and memoirs. In class we will also examine East European Jewish music and visual arts. Course requirements will include two short essays (5 pages) and a 10-page term paper as well as conscientious participation in class discussion. Readings will be drawn from both primary and secondary literature. Represented in the primary reading will be central figures in German-speaking Jewry, possibly including Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Rahel Varnhagen, Franz Kafka, Bertha Pappenheim, Martin Buber, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The secondary literature may draw from Amos Elon, The Pity of It All, Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto; Michael Meyer, ed., German-Jewish History in Modern Times and Michael Brenner, The Jewish Renaissance in Weimer Germany.